5.3 KiB
David Brin: The Giving Plague
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Author: u/occasional-redditor *
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Score: 48
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Created: 2017-02-18T16:53:44
Post:
Comments:
u/CeruleanTresses [+17] (6 hours later)
u/None [+14] (8 hours later)
Huh, the part where he said he said he only wanted to donate blood now seems far more chilling in retrospect...
u/redrach [+11] (13 hours later)
That could be a possibility, but I think it would undercut the point of the story. He's a a cold-hearted person who ends up doing good for humanity because he's thought it out, while surrounded by people who are doing good because they're infected.
Plus as a virologist who's intimately familiar with the virus, he would know if he's infected or not, and probably regularly checks to make sure.
u/CeruleanTresses [+14] (13 hours later)
It's really strongly implied, though, like with the previous stuff about how people rationalize the behavior as if it's their own choice, and the part where he mentions that he donates blood.
u/Bowbreaker [+2] Solitary Locust (2 days later)
[Spoiler](#s ""Why would he go from bed to bed while nursing his own fever then?")
u/IWantUsToMerge [+11] (8 hours later)
Might Les have just stuck him while he was asleep one day? Gave him a contaminated needle, maybe?
u/IWantUsToMerge [+15] (5 hours later)
hmm I wonder if Les engineered CAPUC. He knew more than he should about it, and it just happened to require a lot of transfusions. It would have been impossible for the world to stop ALAS under CAPUC, even if they'd known about it. They probably wouldn't have wanted to.
u/None [+7] (8 hours later)
I was thinking this too. I kept anticipating a note from beyond the grave or something like that.
u/MereInterest [+12] (9 hours later)
Wouldn't he want his forged blood card to be O negative, rather than AB negative? Sure, AB- is the rarest blood type, but they can accept blood from A-, B-, O-, and AB-, a full 16% of the population. O- have the most restrictions when receiving donations, as they can only receive from other people with O-, 7% of the population.
Also, donation centers always test the blood type anyways, so he'd have to avoid donation as well in order to keep the deception from being discovered.
u/ZeroNihilist [+4] (16 hours later)
Worldwide, O- is even rarer than in the US. See this Wikipedia article.
The weighted mean of the listed countries is 2.9%, as high as 9% in some countries and as low as 0.15% in Japan. It's low throughout most Asian peoples, mainly due to a very low rate of Rh negative alleles.
u/callmebrotherg [+7] now posting as /u/callmesalticidae (an hour later)
Pestilent sequel to Shel Silverstein's Giving Tree?
u/IWantUsToMerge [+7] (5 hours later)
It's weird how often sci fi has viruses coming from space. Isn't it basically impossible? Since viruses meant for aliens generally wouldn't be adapted to infect earth life, and also because space dwellings tend to have air scrubbers everywhere, and lots of bulkheads.
On the other hand, space is big. Larger population sizes mean more chances for horrible things to emerge and spread.
u/ben_oni [+8] (7 hours later)
In some of Brin's other work there is an implication that life on Earth was seeded by microorganisms from space. For instance, a comet carrying all sorts of frozen life forms impacts, spreading new germs into the ecosystem. I find it pretty unlikely that life would develop in space and spread to planets, but it's not too outrageous an idea that it can be ignored completely.
u/Bowbreaker [+1] Solitary Locust (2 days later)
It probably wouldn't develop in space. But maybe it could develop on another planet and then get spread around when said planet gets hit by a gigantic meteor or something.
u/abstractwhiz [+6] Friendly Eldritch Abomination (10 hours later)
It's actually a relatively serious theory, though of course there's not much evidence for it yet.
That's one reason why we might want to search for microorganisms in potentially life-bearing areas of the solar system (Mars, Titan, Europa, etc). If they turn out to be surprisingly similar to Earth-based life, that's a point in favor of this hypothesis.
Mind you, these are hypothesized to be just hardy microorganisms, not viruses evolved to prey on a particular type of life.
u/redrach [+4] (2 hours later)
I remember hearing an audio version of this on escape pod years ago, it was pretty great. You should track that down if you're interested.
u/None [+5] (2 hours later)
I liked this story. Thanks for sharing.
u/None [+0] (9 hours later)
[deleted]
u/callmebrotherg [+2] now posting as /u/callmesalticidae (a day later)
Pathological? Because kidney donors are diseased?